


Grow Old and Change

by navaan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Depression, Flirting, Immortality, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack knows his immortality is as much a curse as a blessing. And maybe he has lost sight of what's important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grow Old and Change

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Trobadora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/gifts).



> Written for Trobadora's [stocking](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/480862.html) at [](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/)**fandom_stocking**

The world was dying around Jack.

It was a gradual, slow decay that had started in the trees and was now slowly moving into the water. The team of scientist who had been sent here under his leadership to colonize the world were looking at him unhappily. 

“It's like the planet is rejecting us,” Monica Garlan, his second in command, said and looked at her newest readings. 

“It started right here, didn't it?” 

“Yes.” She nodded. “Right here.” 

“Then you are right,” he said. “We _are_ the problem.” _Or perhaps_ , he thought, _it's me. After all I'm the anomaly here._

“Whatever we did, we have to make it right again,” their lead botanist, Caralan Gerll said and smiled at her superior officer. Monica nodded, her face pale and her expression determined. “It's the least we can do. We can't just let this whole ecosystem die, because we came here and were too stupid to figure it out.”

“Right,” Jack said. “We can't. But maybe we should go back up to the station and do some more tests.” What he wasn't saying was that he already had a pretty good idea what he'd have to test first.

* * *

Golon, the youngest member of the crew, was watching his readings sadly. “It's dying,” he whispered. “It's so old and now it's just dying.”

“Even old things die, Golon,” Jack said. “And sometimes they welcome it.”

They were all sad at the fact and now the sadness and worry could be read on all their faces as they watched what was going on down on the planet's surface.

After that it wasn't hard to convince the team that he should take out the shuttle for some deep space exploration, get the lay of this star system, so to speak. They were theorizing about what kind of harm they had done to the ecosystem of the little greenish planet and at the moment they were coming up blank. So they agreed that maybe it was time to look at the bigger picture and see if something had changed significantly around this little solar system.

Jack had a theory of his own, but he wasn't telling anyone about it, as he couldn't very well explain it to a group of scientists.

Nobody here knew what he was.

Nobody would ever know if he could help it at all.

As it was, his blood, his legacy, had done too much harm to the universe already.

So he took the shuttle out to get some readings from the sun, from the neighbouring planets, on cosmic radiation inside the solar system, all for Monica's research and to make sure that the planet wasn't dying because of some interplanetary influence. When he checked in with the team he asked: “Any change?”

“It's not getting better,” Monica said, “but apparently it isn't getting any worse either, Jack.”

He stayed away for more than six days, making his team nervous.

But the planet seemed to relish his absence.

* * *

He'd given away his Vortex Manipulator years ago, hoping that UNIT would take good care of it, better care than the new Torchwood Institute could, at least.

He hadn't missed it in over three hundred years, living a linear life from day to day, hopping planets and changing names and occupations as he travelled through the universe.

Now he missed it. It would have been the perfect way to save the little green dust-ball down there by propelling himself as far away as possible. 

In his incredibly long life he'd seen a lot of death, caused it even. But he'd never before harmed a whole planet.

* * *

“What's wrong with you?” Monica asked. “Are you and Caralan fighting? She seems upset.”

“We're not fighting.” Jack shook his head and then leaned a hand against the glass of the panorama window. “We're just worried about little Reso down there.”

“I've made my final report. We're going to leave in a week, Jack. There's nothing we can do.”

He nodded. It was for the best. Without him perhaps the ecosystem would spring back. It was nearly dead already. Perhaps it was too late now.

Sometimes even perfectly complex things died. Killed by an anomaly or an old menace.

Sometimes even old things died. 

Only Jack went on living, the exception to every rule.

* * *

“Who the hell are you?” Monica nearly screeched as a man in a dark suit just stepped into their command centre and walked past her as if it didn't matter. There hadn't been any ships in this system for weeks, but Jack only needed to look at the old face, the anger, the eyes that were even older, to know. 

“Doctor,” he said.

“Idiot,” the Doctor replied as a way of greeting.

“Be nice, you,” a petite brunette who stepped into the room, trailing after the Doctor, admonished him with a frown. 

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “She thinks she's my minder.”

“Hello? I am your bloody minder, you aggravating alien, you.” she said. “I am Clara. This is the Doctor.” Clara smiled at Monica. “Please don't kill us. He can be nice, I promise. He's just not very good at it.”

The Doctor muttered something under his breath.

Jack stared, transfixed and at a loss. He'd not seen the Doctor for so long a time that he had forgotten what exactly meeting the Doctor could be like. It was shocking and painful to see him now, alive and old and different. “The planet is dying,” he explained out loud, because he knew exactly why the Doctor was here. It was time for the anomaly to be contained. The Tardis had made him this wrong thing he was now and surely the Tardis was the only thing that could contain his decaying influence. And why else would the Doctor finally reappear if not to do him this final mercy?

“You people are so dense,” the Doctor said in his deep new voice that Jack had never heard before. “So dense.”

Clara was looking at the pictures of the planet's surface. “Everything is dying? Why?”

Monica was about to answer, but the Doctor cut her off with an impatient wave of his hand. “It's time sensitive,” he said, scathing, as if it was obvious. He was so different from the man, the men, he'd known, but the anger... he seemed to remember the anger had always been there and it had been for him, too.

“Time what?” Monica was staring at the stranger incredulously.

“Time sensitive,” the Doctor repeated, meeting Jack's eyes head on for the fist time as if he was daring him to admit what he was doing here, killing a whole world just with his presence. “And it's not dying,” he said, spinning on his heal stepping towards the monitors. 

Jack blinked. “What?”

“It's _not_ dying.”

“How can you say that?!” Golon shrieked. “Look at the readings! Look at it! It's practically dead already. A whole ecosystem just wasting away. And we don't know why.”

“Time sensitive,” the Doctor repeated. “It has been waiting.”

“Waiting for what?” Clara asked, looking at the monitors with a frown and then back at the Doctor. “You didn't bring me here to watch more death, did you?” He voice was wavering a bit.

“Oh, Clara. You're clever,” he said and it didn't sound like a compliment at all. “I didn't bring you here to see a planet dying.” He sat down in Monica's chair staring at all of them in turn and then fixing his stare on Jack.

He was still standing right where he'd been standing when the Doctor and Clara had arrived, waiting for the Doctor to take matters into his own hands and take him away. 

“Who are you again?” Caralan finally asked, her hand attempting to tuck a lock of her wild red hair behind her ear. She was a driven woman and rarely nervous, but she was a scientist and was afraid of things she couldn't understand or explain. The Doctor's sudden and unannounced appearance must be all the more frightening for someone like her. “How did you even get here?”

“Doesn't matter,” the Doctor said. “Does it, Jack?” he asked.

“Everything matters,” Jack said, finally finding his voice again. “You know that better than anyone.”

“Do I?” the Doctor asked. “Do you?”

Jack didn't flinch. Because he was sure he understood better than anyone, perhaps even the Doctor. He knew what it was like to lose everything.

“Look then, you unbelieving little minds,” the Doctor said and gestured towards the planet. “Watch that little planet die.”

It was a mark of how exhausted and beat down they were feeling that all of them simply stopped protesting and looked. Only Jack needed a moment longer to pull his gaze away from the Doctor, who was still watching him with his piercing eyes.

The readings were showing that the landscapes had changed from vibrant green and violet to a mournful grey.

“What are we watching for?” Clara asked.

“Just watch,” he repeated, impatient. 

Nothing changed, until...

“The atmosphere!” Monica, suddenly said. “The readings are changing. How is that possible?”

“There is volcanic activity in the northern hemisphere.”

“There were no signs of active volcanoes when we got here.” 

Everyone was suddenly jumping into activity.

A flash nearly blinded him, made him blink and look away. “What's happening?” he asked. “That's impossible.”

“ _You_ are impossible.” The Doctor was still watching him with that intense stare. “Don't you get it yet, Jack?”

But it was Clara who turned to look from one to the other and said: “It isn't dying, is it? It's changing.”

“It's changing. Making a new liveable space for all life it helped create. It's not its time yet,” the Doctor agreed. “Think about that.” He looked at Jack with a nod.

The words shocked him to the core. Too many emotions he hadn't allowed himself for a long time were suddenly crashing in on him. He wasn't able to really process it. Just stared and watched silently, as another miracle unfolded in front of his eyes.

Perhaps a miracle had been what he needed. A miracle to remind him of all the miracles he'd seen across the universe, across time and space. That life in all its forms was beautiful. That life went on endlessly, even if death came to everyone but him. That life had the ability to change and adapt.

“Thank you,” he told the Doctor. 

“I haven't done anything,” the Doctor said as if he'd been insulted.

* * *

Sometime during that first day of them communicating with their home base and announcing they were going to stay here for a while, the Doctor and Clara just vanished again. His team was too busy too even question it, like the two of them had just been a random side effect of the changing planet. Ghosts that spoke for little Reso. Jack knew better, of course.

In the back of his mind he wondered if it would take a thousand years until he saw the Doctor, _a_ Doctor, again, or if this had been the final time.

He still had so many questions.

But there was a miracle before him and for the moment that was enough to occupy his thoughts. He watched a planet terraform itself, change and start over.

He knew what it meant.

He knew what he needed to do.

* * *

They watched it all unfold for nearly a week.

Then it slowly calmed down.

“It's amazing,” Golon said and showed him a picture of a little green seedling breaking through the grey ash covering the surface.

“It's a miracle.”

“Life is so resilient,” Golon agreed.

Fish were back in the sea. Birds were sifting through the ashes. Little mammals were crawling out of their hiding places. All of them had survived somehow, hidden away well enough to even fool their scanners.

* * *

By the time the Tardis dropped in again, just appearing to him in the hangar when nobody but him was around, he had already made up his mind. 

Nobody stepped out, so Jack, feeling confident and like he was looking forward to what was to come for the first time in years, walked towards the out of place blue box that once upon a time had meant the world to him - and opened the door.

Inside the Tardis the Doctor, the same Doctor with the grey hair and the piercing eyes, was standing in the middle of the room watching the door with what looked like an unhappy expression. At this point Jack was feeling a little more like the very young and stupid Jack who had been taken along for the first time, so he closed the door behind him as he stepped in and looked around. The Doctor didn't say anything as he moved around, just watched him carefully. “It looks like you live here,” Jack said.

“How astounding,” the Doctor said.

“I mean this room,” he explained. “You have all you need right here, as if you are looking for reasons not to go into any of the other rooms. He nodded his head towards the corridors.

The Doctor stared at him unblinkingly and it wasn't entirely improbable that he was considering this.

“So, I didn't nearly kill the planet?”

“It's time sensitive. Not really sentient, that would be creepy. But there is some time sensitivity built into the whole solar system here. Very unique this part of the universe.”

“I'm sure,” Jack said.

“It's an impossible thing. You are an impossible thing. Sensed you, thought it was time, started the regeneration cycle. Poof.”

“Poof,” Jack agreed.

The Doctor stared at him, hard and unblinking then and pursed his mouth into a very angry thin line. “Unique things adapt,” he said, as if he was berating Jack. “Unique things grow old and change and go on. Life goes on.”

He was only meeting this new Doctor for the second time, but it was already the second time that he felt gutted by his words. His throat was constricting and he couldn't say anything. So he simply nodded.

“Do you know why we Time Lords settled on regeneration?”

He shook his head. “But I can imagine.”

“Change makes it easier not to go crazy when you live impossibly long lives.”

“Not completely crazy you mean.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said smugly. “That's exactly what I mean.”

* * *

The Tardis jumped them a year or so into the planet's future. Insect noises were overwhelming, forests were sprawling across the hills, Birds were singing, and little flowers were springing up all around them. Even little animals seemed to have survived and adapted faster than possible. “Does evolution usually happen this fast?”

“When it's time to do so,” the Doctor said. He was still standing inside the Tardis door, his arms folded in front of his chest, not smiling.

“You're not very cheeky,” Jack observed. “I liked it when you were cheeky.”

“A week ago it wouldn't even have mattered,” the Doctor shot back, and managed again to hit him right where it hurt.

“A week ago I had forgotten what it was like to see the wonders of life,” he said after clearing his throat.

The Doctor looked away, watching nothing in particular, before he said: “Do you remember now?”

“Yes,” he answered, “and it's the most amazing thing.”

The Doctor nodded. “Are you ready for more?” It was the unfriendliest possible tone, but Jack's face lit up with a smile. 

“When can we start?”

The Doctor was already moving backwards into his time machine, rolling his eyes. “I thought you would never ask. Let's go and get Clara. School must be out. The P.E. won't object.”

Jack chuckled. “Still deciding for everybody else?”

“Better be thankful,” the Doctor said. “It's what I'm good at.”

And Jack really was thankful and stepped back into the Tardis without hesitation.

* * *

“How did you even know?” he asked, after they'd escaped from an exploding space station, after finding a ghostly alien locked inside an old bottle, and after visiting a concert of star singers on Geralion Z that had ended in disaster, without catching a breath between adventures.

“You were calling out to me,” the Doctor said, holding up a familiar leather bound piece of psychic paper. “You wanted it to end.”

“Oh.” It was true enough. Lifetimes and lifetimes of memories, of families and friends and lovers and most of all of loss. “Frankly I thought you were dead, too. I knew there had been another Doctor from UNIT records, but I haven't heard anything about you in ages. Even the Torchwood Institute databases have lost all trace of you.”

“Nonsense,” the Doctor said. 

“I was beginning to believe it.”

“You are an idiot. But so is the less impossible rest of your species.”

Jack grinned, amused at the insult. “You know what?” Jack waited until he looked up at him with a pinched expression. “I think you are better than cheeky.” The Doctor rolled his eyes again, the whole thing so familiar and perfect that Jack had to laugh at him, the first hearty and free laugh he'd laughed in forever. “Do you _dance_?” he asked. “This you? Do you, you know, _dance_?”

“Stop flirting, Jack,” the Doctor told him sternly. “We're both too old for that. It's distracting.”

“So, you are still difficult? High maintenance? I could buy you a drink first.”

The Doctor sighed and pinched the back of his nose. “Kissing is tolerable,” he stated then like he was citing from a book, “but hugging is definitely were I draw the line.”

“Good,” Jack said and walked away, leaving the Doctor to trail behind. “I'm a fantastic kisser.”

“My wife never complained,” the Doctor mumbled.

Jack nearly stumbled over his own feet in surprise. It had taken him a lot to remember it, but now it was all coming back to him again. It was never ever boring with the Doctor. Things were always fresh and new and familiar, all rolled into one.

This was exactly what he needed.


End file.
